Climate change proposals based on faulty research

August 18, 2009

It’s likely a sign of desperation that national security is increasingly invoked as an excuse for waging war on global warming.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., says global warming will create “climate refugees” and bring international conflicts. The American military, the reasoning goes, will have to intervene in massive humanitarian efforts or with force. This echoes President Barack Obama’s depiction last year of global warming as an alleged “national security” threat.

A Defense Department think tank now predicts changing climate will create international instability. Retired Army Gen. Anthony Zinni warns we must pay now to avert global warming, or pay later militarily. Former Sen. John Warner, in conjunction with the Pew Environmental Group, claims there’s a “critical link” between national security and global warming.

The message is: Impose Draconian solutions like the pending cap-and-trade bill in Congress, for the sake of national security.

Everyone should take a deep breath. These scary warnings are predicated on assumptions based on worst-case scenarios, and are far from proven.

Even if seas and temperatures rise, and hurricanes increase, the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade greenhouse gas regulations would have next to no effect. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson concedes “U.S. action alone will not impact world CO2 levels.” Climatologist Chip Knappenberger says Waxman-Markey regulations would moderate temperatures no more than two-tenths of a degree over a century.

It’s just as likely cap-and-trade regulations pose national security threats of their own by stifling economic growth, creating energy scarcity and making fragile nations even more so, says James Jay Carafano, Heritage Foundation research fellow for national and homeland security. Such economy-strangling measures would weaken U.S. economic competitiveness and military preparedness, he says.

We must remember scary global warming predictions are based on unproved computer-model projections tying temperature to greenhouse gas emissions. But those predictions are worst-case scenarios, cherry-picked from two dozen computer-generated models, all based on incomplete data. Missing from the calculations is what may be the most influential factor, cloud cover, the effect of which no one understands. Meanwhile, greenhouse gas emissions have soared for a decade, but temperatures have leveled and even declined. The nation should resist being stampeded into another costly 1,200 pages of barely read, poorly understood “solutions.”